Jewdwine breathed a sigh of contentment at the close of the great
chorus in the second Act. After all, Rickman was the best antidote to
Rickman.
But Lucia was looking ardent again, as if she were about to speak.
"Don't, Lucy," he murmured.
"Don't what?"
"Don't talk any more about him now. It's too hot. Wait till the cool
of the evening."
"I thought you wanted me to play to you then."
Jewdwine looked at her; he noted the purity of her face, the beautiful
pose of her body, stretched in the deck-chair, her fine white hands
and arms that hung there, slender, inert and frail. He admired these
things so much that he failed to see that they expressed not only
beauty but a certain delicacy of physique, and that her languor which
appealed to him was the languor of fatigue.
"You might play to me, now," he said.
She looked at him again, a lingering, meditative look, a look in
which, if adoration was quiescent, there was no criticism and no
reproach, only a melancholy wonder. And he, too, wondered; wondered
what she was thinking of.
She was thinking a dreadful thought. "Is Horace selfish? Is Horace
selfish?" a little voice kept calling at the back of her brain and
would not be quiet. At last she answered it to her own satisfaction.
"No, he is not selfish, he is only ill."
And presently, as if on mature consideration, she rose and went into
the house.
His eyes followed, well pleased, the delicate undulations of her
figure.
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